


Don't Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

by samalander



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Frostbite, Gen, Magical Realism, Medical, Near Death Experiences, Poor Life Choices, Post-Movie(s), clintxbow otp, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after Clint is freed, even after the battle is won and the villains vanquished, he can’t get warm. He can’t escape the little seed of Loki, and how it is killing him.</p><p>And his fingers are turning black and his chest is always numb.</p><p>Clint Barton is freezing to death from the inside out. And there is no one who can save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [enigma731](http://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/) and [SugarFey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/), who kicked my ass directly through this, as well as convinced me that I had to write it.
> 
> I think this is the last of my "magical realism" cycle, at least for now. Three in a row is a little excessive.
> 
> Title from Hit The Light's "Make A Run For It"  
>  _we can make a run for it_  
>  we've got this down to a science baby  
> don't be afraid  
> be very afraid  
> we've got this down to a science baby  
> we don't make mistakes  
> we don't intend to make

When the battle is done, when Loki has been sent off and order restored, Natasha takes Clint home. He feels like he could sleep for years, like he could sleep forever. The sleep he got under Loki's control was in fits and starts, and it was haunted by dreams of sinking, of killing, of being made to do things he would never do.

He unlocks the door to his shabby little apartment and ushers Natasha in before him. She stops in the kitchen for something, but Clint stumbles straight to the bedroom, shedding clothes and shoes as he goes, crawling between the cool sheets in his boxers without bothering to do anything like turn on a light.

They're both exhausted, he realizes, as Natasha falls into bed next to him, her body soft and warm and familiar. She's lost some clothing too, and he'd really love to do something about the expanse of skin she's pressing against his back, but the weight of the past days takes over. So instead he yawns, his jaw popping in the process, and drifts off for the first time in what feels like a lifetime.

* * *

He wakes drenched in sweat, Natasha's hands firm on his shoulders. He's been dreaming, he knows that from the cold stabs of terror that are sending aftershocks skittering through his body. But whatever the horrors are that haunt his sleep, he can't seem to access them in the dim light of his bedroom. 

Clint waves off Natasha's concern and slips out of bed. She deserves her rest. He spends a long few minutes in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror. His eyes don't seem to be blue anymore, all traces of arctic trance gone from his face. Still, he stares until his countenance dissolves into shapes, until his face makes no more sense than his fleeting nightmares.

When he can't stare anymore, he pulls on pants and a sweatshirt and sneaks out the door. It's a hop and a skip to the bodega at the corner, where he buys a 24-pack of the cheapest beer he can find, and a bottle of malt liquor that's already cold. Natasha's still asleep - though he doubts she missed his comings and goings - when he gets back, so he puts the beer in the fridge and opens the bottle. It's the middle of the day, the sun high and hot, but Clint saved the fucking world, so he sits on his couch and drinks until the sky starts to darken again and he's relatively sure he's far enough gone to sleep without dreaming.

* * *

In the days that follow, sleep becomes a kind of unattainable mystery to Clint. He wants to sleep, he misses sleeping. But every time he closes his eyes he sees faces. Not just the agents he killed at Loki's behest, but the people he lied to and cheated and manipulated in order to get that goddamn asshole what he wanted. He sees Selvig, he sees Natasha, and on the worst nights, he sees Loki himself, sneering and looming, all spite and rage.

Sleep is a terrible idea, so Clint doesn't do it.

He knows how he looked when he stormed the Helicarrier, he's watched the footage of his arrival over and over, and the memory of his eyes, crystal blue and rimmed with angry red flesh, haunts him. Loki didn't much care about or understand the basic needs his human pets had, so things like sleep and food and hygiene weren't necessarily taken care of.

Clint takes lots of cold showers to stay awake, and he eats when he's hungry, but he _can't_ sleep. He won't.

Of course, he does sleep _sometimes_ , because part of being human (which, couldn't Loki have just taken that when he left, too?) is falling afuckingsleep. Clint at least tries to be as drunk as possible when it happens. It's strange; after all these years of hating the man, he finally gets what his father was onto with the booze. The alcohol numbs Clint's senses and calms his nerves and warms his hands, which seem to be almost constantly cold - no matter what he does, there is a shiver in them, something that's slowly developing to a tremor.

That scares Clint more than anything else, the idea that his hands might not be steady enough to fire a bow, but the beer helps keep that thought away, too, and he compensates by cradling his bow lovingly instead of drawing the string.

Natasha accuses him of moping, of wallowing, but he thinks she just doesn't get it. She doesn't understand, for all her strong words about being unmade, what it is to be compromised like this. She's hurt people, sure. She's acted on nefarious orders. But those people weren't her friends, those orders weren't carried out under duress, with every part of her that was actually _her_ screaming for release. And if they were, she's over it, and Clint doesn't want to hear any empty platitudes.

He's decided she doesn't understand, so he lets her walk out of his apartment the day after the battle, lets her report to SHIELD, and puts his cell phone in the freezer. He has better things to do than talk.

He makes it a good five days, until his brain is blinking in and out of coherence from the infrequent naps, before someone tracks him down. He's only slightly surprised it's Rogers, who Clint had thought was taking some kind of Finding Myself 2K12 tour on his olde-timey motorcycle.

"Heya, Cap," Clint says, opening his apartment door. "What's new?"

Steve seems to roll his eyes, which Clint thinks he must have learned from Natasha, because surely they didn't have anything as urbane as sarcasm in the 1930s.

"You're AWOL," he says, brushing past Clint and into the apartment which, upon reflection, might have seen better days. And might smell a little like a middle school gym locker.

"Not actually a soldier anymore," Clint says. "I have vacation time and I'm using it."

Steve nods. "Which would be fine if you had told anyone that, or bothered to answer your phone."

Clint just shrugs. "Phone's gone AWOL, too," he says. And maybe sassing Captain America is bad form, maybe it's cruel or unpatriotic or something, but Clint doesn't much care at the moment.

"Fine," Steve says. "Find it, okay? And come to headquarters tomorrow. You've won free psych testing."

"If I don't?"

Steve smiles a smile that makes Clint think of a snake, lithe and a little cruel. "Then I'll come back with Natasha," he says. "And we can all go together."

They stare at each other for a long moment, a standoff that lasts either a second or a year, Clint is never sure later. 

"Fine," he says, finally, and Steve nods.

"Tomorrow," Steve says, all military efficiency. "Ten hundred hours." He doesn't bother to say anything else, he brushes past Clint again, kicking an empty beer can as he goes.

 _Jackass_.

* * *

Clint goes into headquarters, mostly because he saw Steve win over Natasha and take apart the Chitauri, and has no desire to be on the receiving end of the man's shield _or_ his puppy-dog eyes. The woman they assign to test him is a weary-looking brunette who calls herself Megan, but Clint prefers to think of her as Dr. Kuhn, just because it's easier to hate her that way.

She asks him a thousand and seven questions about his life and greatest fear and what he remembers about Loki. She asks him to build things out of blocks and make up stories about pictures and it takes about fifteen seconds for him to decide that any barrage of psych testing is going to be useless.

Still, he complies because there's no good reason not to, unless "I'm a little drunk and also I hate you" counts as a reason - which he's pretty sure it doesn't. After a year and a half of the pointless block-building, story-telling bullshit, they take him in for roughly one million different brain scans, each one requiring him to lie still and listen to the voices of his tormentors, when he can hear them over the small explosions the machines seem to set off. And he knows, intellectually, that it's just the machines, but everything in his body wants to run when the MRI starts. It's like being under fire, pinned down and exposed.

But Clint is a sniper, and if he can lie still in a swamp for two days while bugs eat him and his ghillie suit discovers new and interesting ways to smell and itch, he can handle psychiatric testing.

Except something about these tests, the blood draw and the questions and the assessing looks that Dr. Kuhn is shooting him, are sending Clint a little over the edge. When they get him back from the MRI, the echoes of the detonations still ringing in his head, he decides he's had enough. At this point they have to know if he's sane or not, have to have some clue.

It doesn't help that his fingers are moving of their own volition every so often, little jumps of muscle that are setting every inch of him on edge. When Dr. Kuhn brings out a picture of a man and a child fishing and asks him to tell her a story, Clint has officially had Enough.

He briefly considers tearing the picture up, or screaming, or trashing the place. Instead, as though he can prove his sanity by abstaining from wanton destruction, Clint just stands and walks out.

He doesn't get far, but he never expected to. He was expecting Natasha, but it's Hill who's waiting for him at the front door, a cadre of armed guards behind her. Not that she needs them- in close combat, Hill has the upper hand on him. Still, Clint isn't sure he has the wherewithal to actually fight- or if it does come to blows, he isn't sure he'll remember to hold back, while she surely will.

"I'm leaving," he tells her, squaring his shoulders.

"I gathered," she says, matching his stance.

They stare each other down, like a scene from a western. He's reminded, suddenly and coldly, of drawing his weapon and firing at her, of every muscle in his body compelling him to hurt her, while his mind screamed to miss- it was all he could do to let the recoil take his wrist to the side, to allow a slight variation in accuracy and let her get away.

"Either suspend me or don't," he says, and he's suddenly tired again, suddenly feeling the weight of the days of sleepless boredom. "But don't make me sit through another inane test about my childhood."

Hill nods slightly. "Two months paid leave," she says. "And then we meet again."

Clint just shrugs. Two months, two years, two lifetimes. He'll never be who he was, never be able to look his fellow agents in the eye knowing everything that happened, everything he did. His fingers are still twitching in a low-level tremor, and he's pretty sure that if that keeps up, he'll never shoot again, and all the leave in the world won't bring that back. But Hill is trying to be kind, because she must know he missed on purpose. 

"Thanks," Clint grits out. 

Hill steps aside and lets him walk out of the building.

* * *

It's been a long time since Clint wandered New York aimlessly. When he first got to the city, he used to wander for hours, mapping the grid of streets like a tourist- _here_ is a good place to hide and _here_ is a good place for a curry and _here_ is a place you can pick a tourist's pocket if you're hungry. Echoes of a little boy raised by circus folk, habits learned trying to fit in and get what he needed without getting caught needing anything at all.

When he leaves SHIELD, he wanders north to midtown, towards Times Square.

 _Here_ is the place with good spring rolls and _here_ is an alley with a fence he could jump in a pursuit, and _here_ is damage from last week's alien attack.

The carnage gets worse as he walks, rubble here, a burned out car there, gently evolving into the crushed remains of Grand Central Station and the shattered Stark Tower, the one glowing A all that's left of Tony's giant ego trip at the top.

He considers joining the cleanup, watches the men and women shifting rubble for a brief minute before turning and walking into the tower. No one seems to recognize him, and if they do they keep it to themselves, which Clint is just fine with. He's not here to be a hero, and he's not sure he'd know how to do it, anyway.

There's no one in the lobby, and Clint briefly feels stupid for walking in as if he has any right to be there, any reason at all to bother Tony after a week of silence. He's about to turn and leave when the phone on the reception desk rings. 

It startles him enough to stop, but he can't see any reason to pick it up- even if he did, what would he say to the person on the other end? "Sorry, I don't work here, but the phone was ringing, and I forgot voicemail was a thing." So instead, Clint watches the red light blink until it stops, halfway hoping someone will come to answer it, come to tell him what he should do with his newfound alcohol dependence and loneliness and trembling hands.

No one comes and the phone stops ringing, so Clint turns to leave again.

"Agent Barton," a voice says. It's an upper-crust, English voice. "Mr. Stark would like you to come upstairs."

Clint looks around for a long minute. "Are you-- are you JARVIS?" he asks, hoping the voice will either say yes or not answer. The last thing he needs right now is a bossy British voice in his head.

"Yes sir," the voice confirms.

"Oh," Clint says, blinking rapidly. He's not sure what to make of this all.

"If you'll take the elevator," JARVIS says, and one slides open at the other side of the lobby. Clint eyes it critically. He hasn't lived this long in his line of work by blindly stepping into magic elevators that slide open for him. But he does know about JARVIS, and Tony did save him at least once in the battle, so Clint figures he owes them both a little trust.

"JARVIS?" he asks.

"Yes sir?"

"If Tony had programmed you to like, gas me in the elevator, would you tell me?"

"No sir," JARVIS replies, and Clint is sure there's a note of amusement in his voice. "Mr. Stark programmed me with Asimov's laws of robotics. I may not harm humans."

A chill runs up Clint's spine. Something in him pipes up, a cynical voice reminds him that he's _not_ human, not since Loki took him over and made him a monster. Still, he takes a breath, pushes the thoughts aside, and steps into the elevator.

* * *

Clint stands atop the glowing A that used to be Tony's name, his arms feeling heavy from the webbing that holds them to his body.

"You don't have to do this!" Tony yells, trying to be heard over the wind. "I have robots!"

Clint gives him his best fuck-you grin and steps off the edge.

He's jumped from planes before, fallen thousands of feet to the ground, often into hostile territory. But BASE jumping is new to Clint, and the way the air rushes around him is addictive, the speed intoxicating. He thinks, for a brief moment, that this would be a good way to die, that this wouldn't hurt anyone. Instead he spreads his arms and legs and lets the suit catch the draft.

Now he's flying - the polymer that Tony and Bruce have made is intense, and somehow it uses the updraft and currents to lift Clint's body. He finds he can steer through the streets by leaning, as if he were in the Iron Man suit, or that kid who dresses like a spider.

It's amazing.

But the suit has limits, and Clint can only fly for a few minutes before he has to land, gliding to the ground in a tumble of arms and legs. He feels the skin of his face meet the pavement, imagines that he'll have a few cuts and bruises. But it's worth it, so worth it, to be able to tell Natasha he _flew_.

The thought of Natasha gives him pause- she's been quiet for the past month and a half. Granted, the first month Clint spent drunk, alternately vomiting and passing out in random rooms of the Tower. But that got boring- more boring than psych tests- and it stopped keeping the dreams away. So now he and Tony are chasing adrenalin highs - they find fights in alleys and jump off of very tall things, and Clint can at least sleep at night knowing that the only person he's hurting is himself. Not that he sleeps often, because Loki's laughter still echoes through the cavern of his mind, but he's trying not to dwell on that. 

And if Clint misses her, well, she knows where he is - he knows she still talks to Pepper, so there's no reason she wouldn't. She can come to him.

He picks himself off the ground - and thank god for the damaged city and closed roads, because doing this with normal traffic would be even more suicidal. He starts the trek back to the tower, the suit chafing and the fabric that helped him fly bunching and catching between his legs. He tries to get the circulation moving in his hands as he walks - they're still cold, and his fingers are moving on their own more now than they were the week before. He tries to believe that it's just New York, just the fall setting in and the leaves changing and the aftermath of the world not ending, but he knows in his gut that something is wrong. Because it's not just his fingers it's his toes, and his palms. The cold is closing in.

And he can't drink it away and he can't chase it away with adventure, and he's running out of ideas.

* * *

Two months come and go and Clint hears nothing from Hill.

Tony's gotten swept into some business out in Malibu, so Clint has been bumming around the Tower alone - well, not alone, because Bruce is there. But Bruce and Clint don't have a lot to say to each other, they mostly grunt and nod as Bruce heads to the lab and Clint heads to the gym.

He's moved on to trying to work himself to death, trying to see if maybe, since nothing else works, the sheer jolt of pushing his body past its limits will have any effect on the cold.

It doesn't, and Clint still dreads sleeping, so he leaves at night, walks around the city and picks fights with drunks and thugs. He usually drags himself home before dawn, mostly unscathed, and sleeps a fitful two or three hours before he can't anymore, before the faces haunt him into wakefulness and he starts over, grunting and nodding at Bruce on his way to the gym.

The tower is cold, which seems weird because JARVIS claims it's normal temperature. Outside, it's October and Clint thinks it's probably expected to be a little cold on October nights, but inside, he can't seem to escape it. The numbness in his toes scares him, but the stiff shaking in his hands breaks his heart. He spends hours each day in the gym, meditating, boxing, lifting weights, and staring sadly at the electronic targets Tony set up, the ones that beep and flash when he hits the center.

Clint doesn't dare hold a gun, not when he can't trust his hands, and he can't seem to hold his bow without the shaking getting worse, his hands trembling until he worries he'll damage it if he tries to draw the string. So instead he opens the case reverently, once a day, and sits, staring at his weapon, waiting for his hands to still.

Three days past his deadline, it occurs to Clint that the reason he hasn't heard from Hill is that his phone is still in his apartment, in the freezer. He hasn't been back there to do more than drop off a rent check and pick up clean socks since the day at SHIELD, and the phone is probably damaged beyond repair now. He could ask Tony for one, or borrow Bruce's, but instead he waits.

It only takes another day or so for Steve to appear again, this time flanked by Natasha, who looks about as angry as Clint's ever seen her.

He's huddled on the couch in the tower, because today he's too cold to go to the gym, though JARVIS tells him it's 80 degrees in the room. His whole body is shivering, and his hands and feet downright hurt. He's got the TV on, but he's not watching the History Channel show about the ancient aliens that built the fjords or something. Which, now that he knows Thor, Clint thinks might be truer than anyone suspected.

Steve has the politeness to cough as they enter the room, giving Clint the opportunity to look over at them, but his muscles are sore and stiff, so he doesn't do more than that.

"Cap," he says, nodding a hello. "Natasha."

"You're AWOL again," Steve says, and Natasha joins Clint in an eye roll at that one.

"Where have you been?" she asks, moving to stand behind the couch, her hands deceptively close to him.

"Here," Clint says, and it's true. Mostly. "You knew that."

Natasha nods and Steve looks uncomfortable as she reaches out to touch Clint's face.

"You're cold," she says.

Clint shrugs. "I've been cold for a long time."

"How long?"

It takes a minute for him to think about it, but it comes to him soon enough - he was cold after the battle, the day she slept in his bed and he drank his memories away.

"Since-- since Loki," he says.

Steve swears softly, which is an interesting development that Clint will need to think more about later. Right now, Natasha is at his side, pulling his hand from under the blankets.

"Fuck," she says, inspecting his fingers. She turns to look at Steve. "Call Jane," she says, brusquely. "Tell her to check Selvig for signs of hypothermia."

"Hypothermia?" Clint asks, feeling like his brain is trying to swim in honey. Dimly, he hears Steve saying something into a phone, his voice steady and authoritative in timbre.

Natasha holds Clint's hand between hers, her skin hot enough to burn. He makes a sound that seems pathetic, a noise of fear – he can barely feel her skin on his, can't really tell she’s touching him, and that’s possibly the most frightening thing he’s ever dealt with.

"Look," she says softly, and Clint does. He's been avoiding it, trying not to see what he knows, on some level is there. His fingers are red, swollen. He thinks they look painful, but he doesn't feel any pain, just the heat of Natasha's hands. Slowly, she turns his hand over, so the palm is facing up.

Clint swallows hard. There's a raised blister on the pad of his middle finger, and the skin around it is brownish-black. The skin around it is dead.

"This is frostbite," she says softly, and Clint thinks that if he weren't already shivering, her words would make him. "Clint, you need a doctor."

"A doctor," he echoes, trying to process. Anger flares, suddenly, in his chest. "So they can tell me I'm crazy?"

Natasha doesn't look angry, she just looks sad, like maybe she pities him. "So they can tell you this is necrotic tissue," she says, touching the blackening skin.

She doesn't have to say anymore. Clint knows what happens next, because he's known for days, weeks even. Next she'll get him off the couch - probably with Steve's help, because Clint's not so sure his feet are up to walking. They'll take him to SHIELD, and the doctors there will tell him that they have to take his hands away, amputate them at the wrist, or he'll die. He wants to be furious or sad, or anything. He wants to care that he's dying, wants to have some kind of emotion about the possibility of losing who he is to stay alive. But he doesn't. Mostly, he's relieved that he won't have to wonder anymore, that he'll have an answer.

And maybe, if he's very lucky, he'll be forgiven for the things he's done - all of them - and he can die in peace.

Clint thinks blankly about his bow, pristine in its case, and tries to summon an emotion about what's happening to him. It doesn't feel real, he can't quite conceive of never being able to shoot again, of never repairing another fletching or twirling a woman's hair around his fingers. It feels remote, like it's happening to someone else.

"Okay," he says softly, and he closes his eyes.

Natasha kisses his palm so gently he barely feels it, and Clint pulls his hand back under the blanket and shivers until Steve comes to move him.

* * *

The best thing about being in Medical is the heated blankets. Clint doesn't feel warm, per se, but they cut through some of the cold that seems to have taken up residence in his limbs.

The doctors have explained any number of things - that the cold is a reaction to Loki, that Selvig is suffering too, that Clint will have to lose at least one finger and three toes. And that's if they stop it now. If they don't, if they cut off his fingers and can't stop the cold, he'll freeze to death.

The doctors think he has a month, two at the outside.

"Thanks for fucking saving me," he growls, when they tell him. Natasha, sitting impassively across the room, just raises an eyebrow and turns back to her magazine.

"You're welcome."

She doesn't leave his room for the better part of three days, just sits and reads or sleeps. Clint hates her for it a little, for the fact that she can leave. The fact that she's sitting there, wasting her time, watching him die.

"What the fuck are you here for?" he asks, after two and a half days of watching Natasha watch him.

"For you," she says. Her affect is flat, almost bored, but there's something in the way she looks at him, something like love or concern, and that scares Clint almost as much as dying does.

"I never asked you to be here," he spits.

Natasha raises a weary eyebrow. "And yet."

Clint can feel the rage bubbling inside him, an almost volcanic pressure building behind his eyes, but he doesn't know if he wants to laugh or cry or yell. Or maybe all three. "What do you want from me?" he asks, his voice unnaturally high and reedy.

"What do _you_ want from you?" she responds, like they're on fucking Jeopardy or something, and she's goddamn Alex Trebek.

"I want to not be dying!" he yells, before he has a chance to think about it. He supposes, in the small part of his brain that's rational, he knows it's not her fault. It's Loki's fault, if anyone can be blamed, but that son of a bitch is long gone, and no one has heard from him or Thor since they left. "I want to walk and run. I want to find out what it's like to turn forty. I want to go on more missions, I want to-- I want to save the world and be an Avenger and see little kids dress up like me on Halloween."

His breath is coming in jagged gasps now, and he can feel himself winding up internally, coiling like a spring. "I fucking-- we, we the Avengers, we saved the world, and I don't even get to _see_ what comes next. I don't get to die in battle, I don't get to have revenge or have a purpose to my death. I get to die in fucking bed, shaking and shivering, because I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and you fucking thought you needed to bring me back. Fuck _you_ , Natasha, okay? That's what I want. I want you to fuck right off, and take your goddamn questions with you." He crosses his arms, his elbows creaking in protest and his hands shaking violently. "Should have killed me when you had the chance."

Natasha's face wavers for a second, an emotion that Clint thinks might be fear or sorrow washing across it before she schools herself back to stoicism. It's all it takes; a tear rolls down Clint's cheek with the idea that she'll miss him, she needs him. He wipes at it furiously with the back of his hand. The mixture of the cold from his fingers and the wet of the tear sends a shiver through him.

"I want to shoot my bow again," he says, barely audible over the beeping of the machines.

The air hangs heavy with his outburst and the sounds of Medical before Natasha grins at him, wide and feral. "I was waiting for that," she says.

What happens next is a blur- Natasha procures a wheelchair, and the two of them exit Medical like he isn't dying, like every brush of air against his hands and feet doesn't freeze his blood. They both know all the back corridors - but this is SHIELD, and everyone knows the back corridors - and somehow, though Clint is never quite sure how, they arrive at the gym without being stopped or questioned or called back.

(It does occur to him, later, that perhaps she arranged it, perhaps Natasha actually went to the trouble of clearing the excursion with Fury and Hill and all the other people who'd need to clear it, but that really isn't her style. So he chalks it up to a miracle, and lets it be.)

She's set the gym up - or had someone do it for her - with a simple straw target, the kind he could usually kill in his sleep, the kind he first started practicing on when he was a kid. His bow is there, too, and one of his quivers, and Natasha places them gently in his lap, helps him open the case so he can run his fingers over the curve of the bow, its sharp hinges and smooth plains. He holds it in a numb, shaking hand before he snaps it forward and back, opening it. The movement is like a dance, one Clint will never forget, no matter how cold he is. He attaches the string with difficulty, not quite having the leverage he needs, but he gets it there and sits, for a long minute, in awe of his weapon, of the simple tool that he's used so many times. It may as well be a part of his hand, and he's losing all of it to the cold. Losing all of it to Loki.

Natasha jolts him out of his mood by pressing an arrow into his hand and he grips it, wishing he could feel it better. She wraps an arm around his torso and hauls him to his feet, which he thinks is a rather impressive show of strength. His knees are weak, but he makes it, standing with his feet apart, the familiar stance. She hands him his quiver, which he loops over his shoulder, his hands still shaking. He takes a breath, nocks the arrow and draws, but his aim is too unsteady; he doesn't think he can let go, doesn't think he can bear the idea of the arrow sailing over or past the target. Natasha leans in behind him and puts her hands over his. He's reminded of every bad romantic comedy he's ever sat through, every scene where a man hit on a woman by making a similar move.

"You seducing me?" he asks, as his hands steady under hers. 

"If I was seducing you," she purrs in his ear, "you'd know it."

Clint barks a laugh and takes a breath, leaning into her and squaring his shoulders before he fires.

The arrow doesn't hit the center of the bullseye, but it doesn't much matter- Clint still gets to hear the satisfying thunk of the arrow hitting the target, still lets it take him back to the afternoons at the circus, the heat and the smell of animals, his hands too small for the bow he had but still he drilled, over and over again. It makes him feel young, and for a moment he forgets that he's dying, forgets the cold. It's just him and the bow, him and arrows, him and the target. The world is too small for Loki, for spells and magic. It's only big enough for now. 

Clint reaches back to draw another arrow, and another and another, his hands shaking too much to hit every time, his feet and legs too unsteady to hold his stance, but his aim is mostly true. His muscles are screaming - he hasn't fired a bow in almost three months - but he keeps going, drawing and firing and drawing again, a rhythm that he can always, always lose himself in.

Until he reaches back and his quiver is empty, his hand finding nothing but air. It jolts him from the memories, from the stolen moments, the gym returning to him and the warmth of Natasha's body so close to his.

"Where were you?" she asks, but Clint just shakes his head. He doesn't want her to know, doesn't want to share that part of him just now. He's relieved when he looks back and sees the chair, when he can collapse back into it and close his eyes.

"What's it like, do you think?" he asks. "Freezing to death?"

Natasha is quiet for a moment, which Clint thinks is enough time for a shrug. "Want to ask Steve? He's done it."

"No," Clint says, shaking his head. "I think -- Lie to me."

"It's like--" her voice falters. Clint's not sure he's ever heard her do that before, ever heard her be unsure of her own words. He opens his eyes to find she's moved behind him, her hands on the back of the chair. "It's like freefall," she says. "You're standing on a plane until you're not. And then it's just, it's just rushing air, just falling. Easiest thing in the world. Throw your arms out and let it happen."

Her words are warm against his ears, and he closes his eyes again, imagining the moment as she talks.

"And then," her voice is soft. "Then you open the parachute, and there's a _tug_ , that jolt. It stops being exciting. It's over. And all you have left to do is land, and infiltrate the base, and kill the mark, and steal the intel. You know," she laughs, "the easy shit."

Clint's breath hitches. He knows what she means, what that fall is like, the hammering of your heart as you wait to see if you'll make it or not. But for him it's not skydiving or BASE jumping.

"I'm on a trapeze," he says. "It's a trick I've done a thousand times. But this time-- this time when I release, when I tuck and flip, there's not another one for me to catch."

Natasha's breathing is as ragged as his, the moment more intimate than any other one Clint can remember, with her or anyone else. It burns, it hurts to think that he's only getting this, only getting _her_ because he's not going to be alive long enough to appreciate it.

"Can you take me back now?" he asks softly, his bow still cradled in his lap. He doesn't want to put it away, and she doesn't ask him to, just silently starts pushing his chair, walking with her measured, quick steps back to where they came from. She lets him hold the bow all the way back to Medical, and lays it next to him after she's helped him into bed.

"Thank you," he says softly, nestled again in the warmth of the heated blankets.

Natasha just smiles and kisses his temple. "Always."

* * *

The doctors fuss over Clint for a few more days, clucking and poking and making him feel more like a baked potato than a person. 

Steve comes to visit for a few hours, spends the time telling Clint stories about New York in the 30s, the adventures he had in the streets and alleys and soup kitchens. Clint dozes while Steve talks, which he feels kinda guilty for, but it's nice to have a voice, nice to see a face that isn't a doctor or Natasha.

Clint knows he's in trouble, and there's something about the frenetic atmosphere of the building that's setting his nerves on edge. Some kind of trouble or something. Usually, around Thanksgiving, the world of SHIELD starts to slow, but this year the world seems to be speeding up, moving more. He wonders, vaguely, if he feels that way because he's dying. He decides not to dwell on it.

Three days after he shoots his last arrow, the doctors tell him it's time to make a choice.

The attending doctor is a small woman with frizzy hair, who talks like she's worried that, if she takes too long, the words won't be there anymore. Clint's seen her before, but his brain feels too sluggish to remember what her name might be.

"Agent Barton," she says, and he knows she's trying to be kind, but he doesn't exactly remember what that feels like, being kind. "Your condition is deteriorating, and it's speeding up. You're going to die."

Clint nods. That's nothing new.

"You have a few options," she says, and Clint wonders where they learn that look, that same pitying look that all the doctors seem to be giving him. 

He stares wordlessly, waiting for her to get to her point. 

"There are a few things we can try - there's a good chance with a thermal therapy that's being developed, but it's not ready for human trials. It'll be at least a month, and even then, it's a longshot. If you want to try it, we can put you in a medical coma," she says, touching his shoulder in a way that he thinks should be comforting, but isn't. "It should slow down the effects. Or, you can stay awake, and you'll go faster. It's up to you."

 _Go,_ Clint thinks, but when he opens his mouth, all he can manage to say is, "I don't want to die."

The doctor nods, and Clint takes a minute to hate her.

"Do you want to try the coma?" she asks, her voice soft.

"Will I dream?" he asks, the rushing fear of his nightmares, of being trapped alone in the dark with nothing but Loki's scorn to keep him company.

"We-- there's no way to know," the doctor says. "You might."

Clint closes his eyes. "I'll do it," he says, his voice cracking like it hasn't since he was a teenager. The idea of waiting, of doing nothing, is the most frightening thing he's ever thought of. He can't bear it. "But-- but if I'm gonna die, you have to wake me up, okay? I have to-- you gotta let me say goodbye."

He searches her face for a reaction, any reaction at all. She just nods, her face impassive and blank. "Of course," she says. "We'll do everything we can."

The doctor says a few more things, tries to prepare him for what the next few days will hold. Clint doesn't listen, mostly because he's tired. Because he doesn't know how to process the information anymore.

Natasha, who's been sitting quietly in her chair the whole time, looks at him sadly. He stares back, waiting for her to say something.

"You want to live?" she asks, after a moment.

Clint just nods. 

"I'll be here," she says, standing and crossing to his bed. She takes his hand, which he can barely feel anymore – not that it would matter, with half his fingers missing – and he shivers at the cold he can feel creeping up his arms to his shoulders and neck. "When you wake up, I'll be here."

Clint nods, swallowing hard to stop the flood of emotions. He doesn't remember ever being this frightened before, doesn't know if he's ever been in such a hopeless place.

"Thank you," he breathes.

She leans in to kiss his cheek, her lips soft and warm on his skin. He'll miss her, he thinks. He'll miss her more than he knows how to say, so instead he turns his head, letting their lips brush.

"See you on the other side," he breathes, and she just nods, tangling her fingers in his hair and holding on like the world might end.

Clint, for his part, doesn't cry. He wonders, distantly, if he can, or if he's too frozen to even show sadness.

* * *

Clint wakes in the same hospital bed he fell asleep in, the same number of tubes and machines surrounding him. He feels weak, like lifting his head would be a superhuman feat.

Distantly, he hears voices. He wonders who they are, that they would be talking in the room of a dead man, of a person who shouldn't even be awake, but he doesn't hold onto it. The thought floats away, and Clint just watches it go.

* * *

He wakes in fits and starts, sometimes awake long enough to catch a face or understand a phrase, but it comes slowly, in what feels like years. It's a little like drowning, like bobbing up and down under the waves as you sink.

He finally manages to catch onto Natasha, who is standing by the door, talking to someone who is probably Tony Stark.

The machines around him are making an ineffable amount of noise, a blistering cacophony after the relative peace of his coma.

"Natasha," he says. His voice is scratchy, raw from disuse and tubes in his throat.

He doesn't have much volume, but she turns anyway, appearing at his side with preternatural speed.

"Happy New Year," she says, kissing his forehead.

"I missed my last Christmas?" he asks, catching her arm where it's braced on the bed next to him. His hand is weak, his grip soft. It'll be ages, he knows, before he can draw a bow again. He laughs, bitterly, at the thought. That's not why he's awake, not at all. He knows it; they said they'd wake him up before he died. "How long?" he asks.

"How long what?" Natasha asks, Tony Stark appearing at her shoulder to peer down at Clint.

"How long do I have to say goodbye?"

Natasha laughs, a sound like relief, and Tony joins her. Clint wonders, absently, if this is one of those coma dreams he's heard about. Some kind of drug-induced nightmare.

"You're cured, pal," Stark says, and Clint notices, suddenly, that there's no blue light from under his shirt.

"What?"

"It's called Extremis," Tony says. "Hell of a thing. Regrows body parts - you're welcome for your fingers - and hot as hell. Seems to have, you know, burned the Loki out of you."

Clint closes his eyes, trying to understand what he's being told.

"If this is a dream," he croaks, "you're both assholes."

"Not a dream," Natasha says. "But get some rest. There's time, Clint. There's all the time in the world."

* * *

Clint keeps waiting to wake up into the real world, to find a reality that seems concrete. He keeps waiting for a doctor to tell him the truth, that he's dying. But they keep talking about Extremis, and what a miracle it is, and how Clint is cured. Like magic.

He doesn't trust it. Magic hasn't ever been good news for Clint. Not that he has a lot of experience with it, but being brainwashed and freezing to death are definitely in his "minus" column on the cosmic list.

(Of course, there's science behind it, and five or six different people try to explain it before Clint throws up his hands in frustration - which, what an amazing thing to be able to do, throwing up one's hands - and accepts that it's some kind of Stark Industries Witchcraft.)

They tell him there'll be no lasting side effects and that he doesn't need to worry about exploding. Which is nice, but not something he generally needs to worry about. He wonders for three days before Natasha tells him about the others, the early test cases. He knows she's leaving things unsaid, but he doesn't have the energy to worry about it. He finally breaks down after an exhausting round of therapy.

"Tell me about Extremis," he demands, causing Natasha to look up from her magazine. He's grown used to her being in his hospital room, a silent presence that reminds him he's alive and loved.

She smiles at him. "I was wondering when you'd ask," she says. "It's a long story, but the short version is that there was a huge terrorist upswing around Christmas which turned out to be domestic and not foreign, which was where we were concentrating our forces, and Stark ended up accidentally inventing a super-soldier serum of sorts, only it makes half of the people they try it on explode."

Clint blinks. "Wait," he says. "Go back."

"It's experimental. It was. Stark figured it out, and used it to get the shrapnel out of his chest. Then we fixed you with it." She stands, putting her magazine neatly on the chair, and moves to stand next to him, resting her hand warmly on his shoulder.

"Well," Clint laughs. "When you put it that way, sounds downright easy."

"It is easy," Natasha says. "All you have to do is not understand it, and it's easy as pie."

He reaches out to take her hand, still marveling at the heat of her, how her eyes and smile seem to chase even the memory of the cold away. "I-- I'm sorry," he says.

"Shush," she replies, squeezing his fingers. He tries not to cry for joy at being able to feel it.

* * *

Physical therapy is hard, but Extremis built him a solid set of hands, with good muscles and easy control. It could be a lot worse. In two weeks, he's rebuilt a lot of his power in his legs and hands, and the doctors let him go home.

Natasha takes him, bundling him through the cold January wind and into his wrecked apartment.

It reminds him, dimly, of the scene after the battle, the two of them exhausted and sore and half-dead, stumbling to bed.

"This place is a sty," she says, wrinkling her nose. "You should do something about it."

Clint doesn't have the energy, he just shrugs off his thick jacket and tosses it over a chair. "Should do a lot of things," he says. 

Natasha has a smile that makes his stomach flip, a kind of predatory grace as she sheds her jacket and hangs it in the closet. Clint can't help but laugh at the idea of Natasha on all fours, stalking the Serengeti. He sits heavily on the couch, ignoring the pile of discarded socks that's accumulated there.

"Are you still afraid of sleeping?" she asks, though he thinks she knows the answer from days of sitting with him, watching him fight to stay awake even as the drugs pulled him under.

"I'm better than I was," he shrugs. "It's still-- it's not easy. I see, you know, things. That I did."

"I thought I told you not to do that to yourself," she sighs, sinking onto the couch next to him. He's reminded, jarringly, of the recovery room on the Helicarrier, the exact conversation she's referencing.

"Did you know?" he asks softly, taking her hand in his. "How bad it all was?"

She shakes her head. "I was-- I thought you wanted space, and Pepper and Tony and Bruce were keeping tabs," she says, entwining their fingers. "I came when I realized, but I didn't want to step on your toes. I thought, you know, you'd call me."

Clint laughs bitterly. "I thought maybe you were grossed out by-- everything."

She lifts his hand to her lips, kissing the rough skin softly, like a prayer. "You're my partner," she says softly. "Nothing to be grossed out about."

"I killed a lot of people," he says, leaning into her warmth.

"And you saved a lot of them, too."

Clint doesn't say anything, because there's nothing to say. They can go in these circles for the rest of both of their lives, and he'll never feel like he's redeemed himself.

"Do you want to sleep?" she asks after a minute. Clint shakes his head.

"I mean, I do. But--"

"But you can't."

He stares at her. "How did you--?"

"You think you're the only one who ever killed people when they were brainwashed? The only one who woke up to monsters in his head?"

"Yes," Clint says, smiling at her. "I'm very special, didn't you know?"

Natasha actually laughs. "I knew."

* * *

It takes a few days of being home, of Natasha helping him clean, for Clint to start feeling anything that approaches normal. He's still fucked up, still twisted and turned from all the things that have happened, but she's there with him, every step of the way. Like he was for her, he thinks, when they first met. When she had to learn to be a person.

They'd slept together before, the kind of fast, life-affirming sex that most agents had after missions. Usually it was hard against a wall, often in a filthy alley or a safehouse. Clint hadn't thought much of it at the time, assuming that Natasha was taking pleasure where she could get it.

When she kisses him, a week after he gets out of Medical, Clint is taken aback. He’d been sure things were going back to normal – their version of normal, anyway – and that they'd stick to the plan.

"What are you doing?" he asks. He's dropped the bag of cans he was holing, his hands coming up to rest on her hips as she kisses him.

"Falling," she says simply, her eyes shining.

Clint's breath catches in his throat, the memory of the day at the range burning cold in his memory. He remembers, with the vividness of winter morning, the way he felt, like he only got to have her because he was dying, because she was losing him.

He doesn't think much else, just bends his neck to kiss her again, tasting the sweetness of her lips, before taking her hand, chores forgotten, and leading her to the bedroom.

* * *

Afterward, tangled in sheets and arms and legs, Natasha looks up at him, her eyes more innocent than Clint's ever seen them.

"What?" he asks, touching her cheek softly - and oh, god, he can touch her cheek, he can feel her skin and it's like a revelation.

"What's it like?" she says. "Dying?"

Clint smiles and kisses her again, tasting the sweetness of her mouth. "You know," he laughs. "It's a lot like freefall."

"Like a trapeze?"

"No," he shakes his head. "Like freefall, because sometimes, if you're really lucky, you've got a parachute. And you think you never will, when the air is so loud you can't even scream, but you land. And the ground is solid, and the world is bright, and you're not falling anymore." 

Natasha nods. "So life is-- life is lived on solid ground?"

"Not our lives," he says. "We jump out of a lot of planes."

She laughs, a high silvery sound like bells, and Clint joins her. He can't quite remember the last time he laughed, the last time he felt as content as he does.

"Tomorrow," he says, yawning widely. "I wanna go to the range." 

Natasha hums assent, rolling her neck and turning onto her side, back to him. He slips out of bed, taking the few steps to the dresser, where his bow case is set, surprisingly undusty. He smiles to himself and opens it, running his hands along the smooth curves.

 _Tomorrow_ , he thinks, and crawls back into bed, into the warm embrace of the blankets and the expanse of Natasha's skin. He kisses her bare shoulder and curls up with his back to her. At least if anything comes for him tonight, he'll be covered.


End file.
